CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2019
Call: VO2AC
Operator(s): VE9CB VO1HP VO2AC
Station: VO2AC
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 28
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1349 State/Prov = 54 Countries = 72 Total Score = 1,186,038
Club:
Comments:
Equipment:
TS-590S (x2)
AL-80A
Inverted L (~100ft vertical) + Dir/Ref Parasitic T (Day 1 only)
BOG (BOS - Beverage on Snow?!) + SDRPlay RSP2
---------------------------------------------------
This was truly a field day type of operation, and fittingly Winter Field Day was
on the same weekend!
Four days before starting the drive to Point Amour (LB), I found out that the
final 2km of the road to the lighthouse hadn't been plowed since the Fall and
was blocked with snow. After a few panicked phone calls to a friend from the
area, I had lined up a snowmobile and komatik to haul us, and all our gear, to
the lighthouse.
After ~36 hours on the road (spread over 3 days) and ~2600km, in temperatures
between -25C and -36C (before the windchill factor), Dave VE9CB and I arrived on
the south coast of Labrador on Sunday January 20, just beating out a winter
storm. The storm pretty much shutdown the entire area on the Monday. Since we
couldn't get to the lighthouse, Dave and I picked up the keys to the buildings
at the lighthouse, and cut the wires for the TX antennas, including over fifty
64ft radials.
We finally made it to the lighthouse late Tuesday morning, via the snowmobile
and komatik. Dave stayed at the lighthouse to scope things out while I drove to
the airport in Blanc Sablon, QC to pick up Frank VO1HP. By late afternoon we
had most of the gear hauled to the lighthouse. The near constant ~50km/h wind,
with gusts to ~100km/h made putting up the ropes for the TX antennas a
challenge. The presence of constant ice encrusted snow underfoot at the
lighthouse, combined with the wind, made walking around hazardous. There were
places around the buildings on site where the hard packed snow drifts were 5ft
high. During the week we were on site, there was only one day without
bone-chilling, frostbite-inducing winds. This is a hard environment.
By late Wednesday afternoon we had the inverted L and radials installed, the
station set up, and making QSOs. We were hearing EU as early as 1730Z! EU was
workable around 1900Z and runnable around 2100Z. (Still windy!)
Thursday morning Dave and Frank found a company to plow the road to the
lighthouse! That meant we could actually drive to the main gate of the
lighthouse, making it a LOT easier to transport everything to and from the
lighthouse. While the road was being plowed we set up the parasitic T. (Still
very windy!)
Friday was the windiest day we had the entire week we were there. We had
intended to install two reversible Beverages, but the weather had taken it`s
toll on the three of us. We did manage to install a 200ft BOG / BOS, thanks to
Frank. The BOG also served to provide us with a local CW Skimmer, since we
didn't have an internet connection for our laptops at the lighthouse.
The contest:
Day 1: As mentioned by many others, condx the first night weren't great.
1st Hour Rate: 98 Q/hr
2nd Hour Rate: 98 Q/hr
10 Pointers: 251
5 Pointers: 463
2 Pointers: 51
The extremely high winds Friday night broke the parasitic feedpoint and the
connection point for half of the radials. We decided to remove the parasitic
and just went with the inverted L for the second night.
Day 2: Condx seemed to pick up.
1st Hour Rate: 45 Q/hr
2nd Hour Rate: 75 Q/hr
10 Pointers: 322
5 Pointers: 249
2 Pointers: 13
At 0730Z we lost power at the lighthouse! We scrambled to see if we'd tripped a
breaker, but unfortunately we hadn't. We reported the outage to the power
company and stuck around for about 45 minutes, but it started to get cold, so we
left. When we reached the closest community we could see that the power was off
there as well. During the drive back to the main road we nearly drove over the
downed power line that was in the middle of the road. A few minutes later a
power company vehicle showed up and the driver told us that it would be several
hours before the line would be fixed, so we went to our cabin and slept. We
missed ~4 hours of good operating time, including the later part of EU sunrise,
all of NA sunrise, and our greyline to VK, ZL, Pacific, etc.
In Canada, we missed VY2 and VE4 like everyone else, which should have been
easy, as well as VY0, VY1, VE8, and VO2(!). In the US, we missed NE, SD, and
WY. I like to believe we would have worked those states if we hadn't lost the
power :=) The only country we heard but didn't work was CE (CE3CT).
Highlights:
1 - Working ID! When Dave and I were at Point Amour in 2006, we worked all
states except ID. We've now completed 160m WAS, but not all in one contest
(yet!).
2 - Working ZL (ZM4T)! In 2006 we heard and called ZL6QH, but the best he could
copy was "O2A?"
3 - EU was LOUD! GM5X and DL6FBL, as well as others, were S9 at 1945! Yet for
some reason we had difficulty working LX7I and Z66X. Despite many calls to both
of them the first night, they weren't worked until 2011 and 2252 of the second
night respectively.
4 - During the 3 day drive to Point Amour, we activated some rare grids on the
FM satellites. When he wasn't operating, and the timing was right, Dave also
made some satellite QSOs from the lighthouse.
The contest ended at 1830 local. By 2130 we had the antennas down, station
packed up, and everything loaded in the truck for the 3 day drive back home.
On Monday, Frank flew back to St. John's via Blanc Sablon, while Dave and I made
the return trek. After 2 days on the road, we parted ways in Baie Comeau, QC.
While I made it home on the 3rd day, Dave wasn't so lucky. Ferry issues and
another winter storm delayed Dave for an extra day.
It'd been 13 years since Dave and I were at Point Amour for this contest. We're
treating this trip as a re-familiarization exercise to prepare us for the next
trip. We learned a lot about what to bring, what not to bring, what works, what
doesn't work, and have staged some equipment in the area to make the next trip a
little (lot?) easier.
Dave will be writing a more detailed account of our trip in an upcoming issue of
The Canadian Amateur magazine.
Thanks Dave and Frank for making this a memorable contest!
73,
Chris VO2AC / VE3FU
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